Sunday, February 26, 2012

Our major interest is the impact of the Depression on voting patterns and hence how voting shares changed after 1929. Our statistical results (see Annex for details) show that that the Depression was good for fascists. It was especially good for fascists in countries that had not enjoyed democracy before 1914; where fascist parties already had a parliamentary base; in countries on the losing side in WWI; and in countries that experienced boundary changes after 1918.
Since Germany ticks each of these boxes and saw a particularly large increase in the fascist vote, one may ask whether these interaction effects are driven by the German experience alone. The answer is that they are not.
Importantly, it shows that what mattered was not the current growth of the economy but cumulative growth or, more to the point, the depth of the cumulative recession. One year of contraction was not enough to significantly boost extremism, in other words, but a depression that persisted for years was.

France actually has a decent economic record relative to Germany’s. Between 1992 and 2001, France managed annual GDP growth of 2.1 per cent compared to Germany’s 1.6 per cent. Over the subsequent ten years – 2002 to 2011 – both countries grew by (an admittedly poor) 1.1 per cent per year. Although the German economy performed better in 2010 and 2011 than its French counterpart, the two countries’ growth prospects are very similar, at least according to the European Commission, the IMF and the OECD. All three forecast growth of around 0.5 per cent in 2013 and 1.5 per cent in 2013. Perhaps the best measure of economic performance is productivity. Productivity per French worker is somewhat higher than in Germany, while productivity growth averaged 0.7 per year in both countries between 2002 and 2011.

Claude Guéant can be a puzzling individual. He seemed really pleased with himself when he came up with the two words "nationalist" and "socialist" to characterize the Front National. Of course he's not as clever as he appears to think he is. Most observers associate him with the "FN-ization" of the UMP in service of his master the president, so if the FN is a "Nazi" party, not to put too fine a point on it, then Guéant would appear to be "un collabo." Thierry Desjardins, anti-Sarkozyste de droite, puts it down to panic in the palace:

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I have been a student and observer of French politics since 1968. In that time I've translated more than 130 books from the French, including Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. I chair the seminar for visiting scholars at Harvard's Center for European Studies and am a member of the editorial board of French Politics, Culture, and Society and of The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville. You can read some of my writing on French politics and history here and a short bio here. From time to time I will include posts by other students of France and French politics (accessible via the index link "guest"). My hope is that this site will become a gathering place for all who are interested in discussing and analyzing political life in France. You can keep track of posts on Twitter by following "artgoldhammer".